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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6658592" data-attributes="member: 4937"> Ok, to begin with, make sure you research the Moken, Chao Lei, and Sama-Bajau peoples - real world sea gypsies.  Lots of great inspiration about how a people would actually successfully live entirely at sea. Most anything you could do on land, you could do with a marine twist.  The festival concept lets you adapt just about any urban adventure to the unique nautical setting.   For example, you could import the ideas of something like Burnt Offerings from 'Rise of the Runelords' and it's applicable here - aquatic demi-humans (either amphibious ones like Sahuaghin or Koalinth or air breathing pirate raiders) attack festival and have to be chased back to their (partially submerged?) lair.   Or you could do something like, "PC's are tasked with guarding a VIP who must go ashore to buy something necessary to community which can only be purchased ashore.  PC's experience discrimination first hand.  Then VIP is attacked and robbed, or simply cheated by unscruplous, and PC's must recover stolen treasure and win local support/vouchsafe from someone (a priest?) despite apathy and sometimes downright antipathy by locals including some magistrates." On the water, you can do, "Fishing expedition goes bad when attached by monster."  It would be a good idea to decide what secrets your inland sea hides now, as well as who are the powers and dominions under its waves.   Your inland sea can easily have several thousand little islands of no more than a few acres each, several hundred of which can have all sorts of weird secrets.  That could lead to an episodic Star Trek like campaign, were exploring islands each leads to some strange adventure. A ship wreck or a storm can be a convenient plot device rather than a game ending disaster, for example, drowning sailors can be rescued by friendly merfolk or even a noble marid, who either then ask the PC's for some help against an amphibious foe they are for some reason ill-suited to thwart or the distress of their new benefactors comes out in some way that should prompt the PC's to seek to repay their hosts (if they are of the heroic inclination). You could also have a 'trouble with the neighbors' scenario, where one of the land powers wrongly blames some crime on the sea gypsies and you have to clear the name of your people and prevent possible disaster by finding the real culprit.  As a twist, the real culprit could turn out to be the sea gypsies, forcing you to turn in one of your own (and possibly leading to internal strife). You might also look for some inspiration in floating cities China Meiville's 'The Scar', although that is a bit over the top weird fantasy so be warned.</blockquote>

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